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Private detective Christopher Adams chases a precious antique jade lion through the Mexican cafes, auto courts, and the seamy side of Los Angeles.

A lawyer, John Campbell (Tom Conway) defends gangster Frank Bricolle (Steve Brodie), on a murder charge and gets him acquitted. Campbell later finds out that Bricolle was really guilty, but since he cannot be tried again on the same charge, Campbell devises a way of pinning another charge on Bricolle. Once he gets him in court, he tricks the gangster into revealing his crooked ways.

When an airplane lands in Los Angeles after sending a radio request for police and medical aid, one of the passengers, matronly Mrs. Judd, tells Police Inspector Bruce what happened: After taking off from New York's La Guardia Airport, the plane makes a brief stop in Chicago, where co-pilot Bill Arthur joins the crew. The plane leaves Chicago, and while most of the passengers are sleeping, a passenger named Middleton is strangled in his seat. When the stewardesses discover Middleton's body in the wardrobe compartment, two men named Murray and Carter brandish guns and begin to rob all of the passengers. They take a jewel case from a diamond merchant named Sebastian, but Mrs. Judd becomes suspicious of Sebastian when she notices that the case is empty. Murray and Carter then break the radio equipment and other instruments in the cockpit, shooting and wounding Bill in the process, before bailing out with their loot. Mrs. Judd shares her suspicions with pilot Ned Johnson, explaining that the robbers knew Sebastian was carrying his valuable merchandise on his person. Sebastian enters the cockpit with a gun and admits that he staged the holdup, hiring Murray and Carter to pretend to steal his jewels. He tells Ned that he strangled Middleton, an insurance investigator assigned to keep an eye on the jewels, and that he gave Murray and Carter defective parachutes so that they would fall to their death. The two men fight as the plane veers out of control, but Ned finally subdues Sebastian, and Bill uses a makeshift radio to contact the airport. Back in Los Angeles, Ned has just finished giving his account of the events to the police. Mrs. Judd then surprises everyone by revealing that she has come to California to attend a reunion of beauty contest winners, and that she had the distinction of being Miss Coney Island of 1918.

Psychiatrist Dr. Michael Madden is visited by a man, Steve "Creepy" Bolin, wearing a weird checkered coat, and after Madden learns that Creepy is subject to death-like trances and the fear of being buried alive, Madden concludes Creepy is obviously a psychopath (at least, until a real one comes along) with possible criminal tendencies. When leaving, Creepy tells Madden he is a friend of the doctor's no-good brother Fred, while also throwing a few sinister and leering glances in the direction of Madden's wife Betty. Madden wastes no time in notifying the police to pick up Creepy, evidently on a general nuisance charge of looking like Dorian Gray. But Creepy is also sneaky and eludes the police and, when next seen, he and Fred are robbing the Anson Jewelry store across the street from Dr. Madden's office and he shoots and kills both the owner and his son in the process. Dr. Madden hears the shots and rushes over but is slugged by Creepy and he and no-good Fred carry off Madden in their getaway. The police show up and immediately tab Dr. Madden as the prime suspect based, evidently, on him having an office across the street.